If Caro skates like this again in Canada, both Mao and Yuna will need to have the skate of their life to beat her. She's the world champion with world champion bonus and she needs to get bigger bonus for her mastering of all type of triples.

Watching Bolero again, she reminds me of Katarina Witt. All those posings, all those limbs. This is probably the strongest long program since Yuna's LP in Vancouver.
She didn't make Bolero her own, but she definitely provided a good alternative to T&D's.

I think had she done Bolero before T&D, this would be revered just as highly.

If Caro skates like this again in Canada, both Mao and Yuna will need to have the skate of their life to beat her. She's the world champion with world champion bonus and she needs to get bigger bonus for her mastering of all type of triples.

I see some of Yuna fans aren't so happy. .

LOL. No they don't need the skate of their life to beat that. CaroK's rep is weaker than the two. She may be reigning WC, but both Mao and Yuna have more and bigger medal haul behind them. Yuna in particular can afford mistakes in the free as long as her SP is clean.

The only time Carolina has managed to hold it together at big international competitions was with watered-down content and with practically no competition to put pressure on her. She didn't have Mao (in decent shape at least), Miki or Yuna to contend with last year when Worlds was in Europe. If she performs like this at Worlds in Canada it will be rather unprecedented.

LOL. No they don't need the skate of their life to beat that. CaroK's rep is weaker than the two. She may be reigning WC, but both Mao and Yuna have more and bigger medal haul behind them. Yuna in particular can afford mistakes in the free as long as her SP is clean.

The only time Carolina has managed to hold it together at big international competitions was with watered-down content and with practically no competition to put pressure on her. She didn't have Mao (in decent shape at least), Miki or Yuna to contend with last year when Worlds was in Europe. If she performs like this at Worlds in Canada it will be rather unprecedented.

ok, girl. if you think yuna can pop a jump and run away with the title, pass some of that confidence to yuna. she'll need a lot of that.

mao hasn't done anything in many years that can top this program.
yuna has done it once at the vancouver olympics.

if both skate like they did past vancouver, can't see a single time they could beat kostner. they will need a skate of their life if kostner is clean.

If Caro skates like this again in Canada, both Mao and Yuna will need to have the skate of their life to beat her. She's the world champion with world champion bonus and she needs to get bigger bonus for her mastering of all type of triples.

I see some of Yuna fans aren't so happy. .

LOL wow you have Xray vision? Amazing!
Okay what am I wearing?
What kind of face am I making at you now?

Carolina did well today, congratulations! *respect* If she had skated like that all last year, nobody would have said anything!

I do like this Yuna effect though... Push others to go for challenging content again and to do that at home probably means more to her than any other competitions.

Bring them on I say, bring the all.... The ladies competition just got more interesting

LOL wow you have Xray vision? Amazing!
Okay what am I wearing?
What kind of face am I making at you now?

Carolina did well today, congratulations! *respect* If she had skated like that all last year, nobody would have said anything!

I do like this Yuna effect though... Push others to go for challenging content again and to do that at home probably means more to her than any other competitions.

Bring them on I say, bring the all.... The ladies competition just got more interesting

FlattFan was probably referring to me in that post, since I had just commented earlier about how I found Carolina's program to be boring. Then somehow he/she interpreted that as a Yuna fan being unhappy about her clean performance.

Personally, I'm quite happy Carolina will bring her A-game to Worlds, along with Mao and the rest. If Yuna wins against such a competitive field, then all the better. It will be as satisfying as her Vancouver Olympic victory, unlike Carolina's default World title.

...with real regret that I must say that I strongly dislike the Bolero LP. Leaving aside the question of whether it is ever a good idea to skate to music as iconoic as Bolero, I just don't think this is a good program, or one that does justice to Kostner's skills and strengths as a performer.

I agree. And I even dislike the iconic Bolero performance, anyway (T&D's). This is not a knock on Carolina Kostner as a skater, because she is one of the most well-rounded lady skaters currently out there, and almost everything about her abilities is high-quality.

Originally Posted by Mathman

It's just not possible to skate to Bolero. (Torvill and Dean did what little could be done with it. )

This is exactly it. Maybe a stately single male figure skater could do an OK performance to it (preferably a SP rather than LP), but I don't think it's possible to skate to Bolero and have, at least me, enjoy it.

ok, girl. if you think yuna can pop a jump and run away with the title, pass some of that confidence to yuna. she'll need a lot of that.

[...]

A title isn't won on the strength of a long program alone. In fact, I'd argue titles these days are more dependent on performance in the short program than ever. If Carolina does 3T+2T and a 3Lo in the SP like she did at this national competition, she'll be lucky to beat Yuna with this kind of performance.